Mark Walsh is a contributing writer to Education Week. He has covered legal issues in education for more than two decades. He writes about school-related cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and in lower courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a Michigan special education teacher who claimed she was fired for complaining that the size of her teaching caseload kept her from providing the proper amount of instruction to each student.

A federal appeals court today upheld a Tennessee school district's prohibition of any display of a Confederate flag by students, the latest in a long line of such rulings that have backed administrators seeking to prevent racial conflict over the symbol.